Bounty Hunter Wine & Spirits in Napa Valley has made it our business to track down the hottest wines the world has to offer and serve them via our catalog, our Wine Bar & Smokin' BBQ in downtown Napa and on our website. Our blog provides a unique, insider's view into what we do every day...taste wine, visit our winemaker friends, tour wineries, attend events and of course, stop to enjoy the simple things in life...food, friends and wine.

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Friday, December 10, 2010

2010 Harvest Wrap-up

Justice Cabernet Sauvignon Grapes

Well, we wrapped up a helluva harvest this year. Mother Nature threw everything but locusts at us, but we managed to bring in our Justice and Waypoint fruit in prime condition... the real problem is there just isn't much of it. A cool, wet spring had a lot of people panicking that their grapes wouldn't get ripe (luckily our vineyard managers don't get sweaty palms), so they started pulling leaves to let sunlight reach the clusters. Then what happened? We might have well have been in Tucson for about five days. Fruit started burning like an Irishman in Ixtapa.

When sunburn happens to the degree that it did this year, there's only one solution: lose the raisins. Be it in the field or on the sorting table, there was a lot of shriveled mess to send to the compost pile. That's where it's awfully nice to have high-tech sorting tables shaking out the unwanted stragglers and eagle eyes to pluck out the rest. Then we were left with nothing but beautiful little berries to send to the fermentation tanks. We just wish there were more of them.